
Killing It
An Education
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Narrated by:
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Camas Davis
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By:
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Camas Davis
About this listen
A wayward young woman abandons her magazine career to learn the old ways of butchery and discover what it means to take life into her own hands.
Camas Davis was at an unhappy crossroads. A longtime magazine writer and editor in the food world, she'd returned to her home state of Oregon with her boyfriend from New York City to take an appealing job at a Portland lifestyle magazine. But neither job nor boyfriend delivered on her dreams, and in the span of a year, Davis was unemployed, on her own, with nothing to fall back on. Disillusioned by the years she’d spent mediating the lives of others for a living, she had no idea what to do next. She did know one thing: She no longer wanted to write about the real thing; she wanted to be the real thing.
So when a friend told her about Kate Hill, an American woman living in Gascony, France who ran a cooking school and took in strays in exchange for painting fences and making beds, it sounded like just what she needed. She discovered a forgotten credit card that had just enough credit on it to buy a plane ticket and took it as kismet. Upon her arrival, Kate introduced her to the Chapolard brothers, a family of Gascon pig farmers and butchers, who were willing to take Camas under their wing, inviting her to work alongside them in their slaughterhouse and cutting room. In the process, the Chapolards inducted her into their way of life, which prizes pleasure, compassion, community, and authenticity above all else.
So begins Camas Davis's funny, heartfelt, searching memoir of her unexpected journey to become a successful and enlightened butcher. It's a story that takes her from an eye-opening stint in rural France where deep artisanal craft and whole animal gastronomy thrives despite the rise of mass scale agribusiness, back to a Portland in the throes of a food revolution, where it suddenly seems possible to translate much of this old-world craft into a new world setting. Camas faces hardships and heartaches along the way, but in the end, Killing It is about what it means to pursue the real thing and to dedicate your life to it.
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Critic reviews
“Killing It: An Education (Penguin Press) is as unflinching as one might imagine a book with that title to be, but it’s also humanizing and thoughtful - with the butchery comes a journey of self-realization applicable far beyond the realm of animals or food.” (Vanity Fair)
"Killing It is both a sensual and sensitive ode to the necessity of lifelong learning and a deep look into the painstaking work of turning animals into 'farm to table' food that is simultaneously highly prized and depressingly devalued in US culture." (Salon)
“With grace and power, first-time author Davis tells of how she traded a keyboard for a cleaver.... Her powerful writing and gift for vivid description allow readers to feel as if they, too, are embarking on a life-changing journey.” (Publishers Weekly)
Great Book and a Pleasure to listen to the author
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Transparent, authentic, connecting
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Interesting story, important message, monotone performance.
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Camas' Gascony is beautiful and evocative
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Overrated
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Is it pride, possessiveness, money, denial, distrust or ignorance? Why put all the effort into creating a book, getting it published, only to destroy it on the delivery? I find this to be true with many writers.... Barbara Kingslover, in particular, makes me so sad. She's brilliant, but her voice is so mealy mouthed.
A good narrator does not a writer make.
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